We were glad we could leave the crazy traffic and the noise in Hanoi behind, when we took the bus and boat to Cat Ba island. It's beautiful here, and so quiet! It is pretty cold though, so as soon as we arrived here we bought 'real' authentic Adidas jackets for a few dollars, real livesavers, but very ugly! The first morning here we went hiking at the national park. First we took a nice ride at the back of a motorcycle and then we met our guide, dressed in fancy grey trousers with very clean white sneakers. He took us up and down climbing rocks. It was very slippery and at the end of the trek we were completely covered in mud. (Miriam also had a minor falling incident with a few scratches and even more mud) Of course the guide was still spotless, his white sneakers looked even whiter then before... In the evening we went for some cocktails at the Rosebar, our hang out place here. It's very tacky, with a lot of bright neon lights, and they only play songs from The Beatles or Michael Jackson. But the very cheap Tequila Sunrise tasts very good here! Today we had a fun packed day with a long boat ride, kayakking and visiting some monkey island and a big cave.

The guides didn't speak any English so we had to guess the whole trip. The first time kayakking the guy just waved to the left and we had to figure out that it meant we had one hour to kayak around a rock formation, go to the right, then straight on to find a cave. Of course nobody found the cave and it took us a long time to find all the people back that got completely lost somewhere. But the whole trip was great and the scenery was stunning.

Tomorrow is our last day on Cat Ba and in Vietnam, then it's on to Cambodia! Xxx